Teaching Critical Thinking Effectively

Universities aim to teach critical thinking. But researchers find that students achieve only small gains in critical thinking skills during their college years on average. Can we do better?

Educators can improve their students' critical thinking skills with the right strategies. In particular, a growing body of research suggests that we can substantially improve our students' abilities to understand, analyze, and evaluate arguments, which are key critical thinking skills. Two promising interventions are argument mapping and mastery learning.

However, these pedagogies are not widely adopted. The goal of this site is to make things easier on instructors. I've created a critical thinking course that I believe is effective and I'm going to share all of the materials for this course here.

What's Argument Mapping?

Argument mapping is a technique for visually representing and analyzing arguments. Consider the following argument:

We should intervene in nature in order to reduce the suffering of wild animals. After all, suffering is intrinsically bad regardless of where it occurs. So there's an obligation to reduce suffering everywhere. Yet there is a great deal of suffering in the wild. For one thing, many wild animals are hungry and constantly fear for their lives. Second, wild animals experience terrible suffering when other animals eat them.

Click on this link to see the map of this argument

Argument mapping improves reading comprehension, encourages students to better understand the structure of arguments, and makes it easier to evaluate arguments in a systematic and precise way. To read the evidence on the effects of argument mapping, see ThinkerAnalytix's research page.

What's Mastery Learning?

Mastery learning is a method of instruction in which students work at their own pace and must achieve a level of mastery before moving forward in the course. Students need to complete several different steps and they have to master each step one-by-one. Once students thinks they're ready for the next step, they need to complete a mastery check. If they have achieved mastery, then they'll move onto the next stage. If students have yet to achieve mastery, there is no penalty. They just need to practice some more and then you can take a mastery check again.

Why use mastery learning? Mastery learning empowers students as learners. Students in mastery learning classes tend to learn better, reach higher levels of achievement, and develop greater confidence in their ability to learn. For a review of the evidence on one form of mastery learning— the Personalized System of Instruction—see this article. For a general overview of the research on mastery learning, see this paper.

Teaching Critical Thinking with Argument Mapping and Mastery Learning

Here's the idea. We take one of the most effective ways of teaching critical thinking (argument mapping) and we combine it with one of most effective educational interventions in general (mastery learning). In theory, the result should be a powerful pedagogy for promoting critical thinking skills.

I describe my experience teaching a class with these components in this document and in this video. Some preliminary evidence suggests that this experiment worked and that students achieved impressive gains in critical thinking in this class. You can also read about a similar experiment at Elon University here or watch a video about it.

But it takes ALOT of work to set up a course that combines argument mapping and mastery learning. One of the major barriers is the mastery checks. To run an effective class with mastery learning, you need to create a large number of mastery checks. You also need to create study guides, exercises, rubrics, and more. Busy instructors may lack the time to create these materials.

Fortunately, others have already done some of the work for you.

First, Dona Warren has done amazing work creating a free and comprehensive textbook for critical thinking with argument mapping. Warren's textbook served as the main reading for my class. She's also created an enormous number of exercises.

Second, I'm happy to share all of the materials in my course with you. With Dona Warren's help, I've created about 60+ mastery checks. I've also written study guides, rubrics, examples, and so on.

You can find a public version of my course here.

To see a full version of the course with additional materials, such as the mastery checks, please email me at hidalgoj@gmail.com or fill out this form.

The Steps

I divide the class into several steps, and each step targets the skills that I want students to master. Students work at their own pace through the steps. When they’re ready to advance, they take a mastery check. To pass, students must receive about a 90 percent or higher on the mastery check. If they don’t pass, they keep studying and try again.

Here’s a link to the syllabus. The steps in my class are as follows:

Step 1: Mapping Premises and Conclusions

You’ll learn the basics of argument analysis and evaluation in this step. We’ll cover the concepts of inference, indicator words, premises, conclusions, and you’ll learn basic argument mapping

Step 2: Sub-Conclusions

In this step, you’ll learn how to identify, map, and evaluate sub-conclusions, intermediate conclusions in an argument.

Step 3: Dependent Reasons

You’ll learn how to map and identify dependent reasons, reasons that are linked with other saw premises in an argument. We’ll continue to learn other components of argument analysis and evaluation, such as logical rules of inference.

Step 4: Independent Reasons

This step will teach you how to identify independent reasons (reasons that don’t depend on other claims), arguments with no inference indicators, the logic of conditional “if, then” statements, and more.

Step 5: Implicit Conclusions

Authors don’t always explicitly state one or more of their sub-conclusions and sometimes they might not explicitly state their ultimate conclusions either. In this step, you’ll learn how to identify missing ultimate conclusions and sub-conclusions.

Step 6: Implicit Premises

Every argument includes a number of assumptions that are unstated but are nevertheless necessary for the argument to work. In this step, you’ll learn how to identify and state implicit premises.

Step 7: Computer-Assisted Argument Mapping

You’ll learn how to map arguments with a computer program, Mindmup. This will be useful for mapping more complex arguments, for constructing arguments, and for reviewing what you’ve learned. In addition, you’ll also learn how to map objections and more on argument evaluation.

Step 8: Argument Construction

In this step, you’ll hone your skills at constructing your own argument. Your mastery check in this step will be a paper that develops and defends an extended argument, and maps of the central arguments in your paper.

Step 9: The Disagreement Project

The final step in the course is the disagreement project. You’ll be required to take a position on a topic that you care about and then find another person who has a very different position than yours about that topic. You’ll then have an extended conversation with this person exploring your disagreement. After the conversation, you must write an accurate description of this person’s argument and he/she must confirm that your description is accurate. Finally, you’ll map your interlocutor’s argument and evaluate it.

Critical Thinking Textbook and Exercises

Dona Warren has written a superb textbook on critical thinking and argument mapping, and it's what I use in my courses. You can find a version of the textbook that uses pencil-and-paper argument mapping here.

You can find an updated version of the textbook at the following link that may be better for online classes:

Textbook: Critical Thinking with Argument Mapping

Here are some additional mapping exercises

More Resources on Critical Thinking Pedagogy and Mastery Learning

Mindmup is a free and very useful argument mapping program

For an excellent general guide to flipping your classes and turning them into mastery learning courses, check out Jonathan Bergman and Aaron Sams, Flip Your Classroom: Reaching Every Student in Every Class Every Day. I also recommend their Youtube videos on the flipped classroom and mastery learning (here, here and here).

ThinkerAnalytix is a great organization that promotes effective critical thinking pedagogy. They're currently designing a course that incorporates mastery learning.

Philosophy Mapped has resources on getting started with argument mapping and practice exercises.

The Critical Thinking Center at the University of Wisconsin-Stevens Point has videos on argument mapping, analysis, and evaluation.

Perhaps the best overview of the research on critical thinking and argument mapping is Eva van der Brugge's dissertation.